Organizer: Albanian Art Film Institute, Department of Youth Policies in the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports, Albanian Youth Council

Student workshop:The cinematographic script facing the lack of university education in Albania

Topic:In Albania there are no university programs for the education of scriptwriters and there is no debate on script. Presently, the young people wishing to contribute in this area have only one way: self-education. What should the steps and referral system be when writing a script ...

Ilmotorediricerca is a multi-disciplinary artistic collective that is open and nomadic and was born in Apulia in order to improve the potentiality of his own geographic essence, starting out from the knowledge of his opposite land side: Albania. During the Tirana Film Festival four projects / researches, which are articulated and complex for the cultural-crossing references between Italy and the Balkans, will be introduced:Albania 1e1000, an Italian-Albanian magazine carried out through a travel, relationship and listening practice in collaboration with the Mergimtari Association of Turin, for the Turin Geodesign during the Turin World Design Capital 2009;The accent o f reality (L’accento di realtà), a project by Matteo Fraterno and Cesare Pietroiusti, in collaboration with Morra Foundation and Pino Pascali Museum of Polignano, is a video built as a musical clip shot in Polignano, the native-born city of Pino Pascali and Domenico Modugno based on a Modugno text song modified by a group of young artists coming from Apulia;Brothers, the sons of Evaristo de Chirico (Fratelli/Adelfia, figli di Evaristo de Chirico), a research and a workshop along the Pelion railway line built by the end of the 19th century by Evaristo de Chirico, an Italian engineer and, most importantly, the father of Giorgio and Andrea (since 1914 well-known as Alberto Savinio), two of the European artists that have changed the history of Europe; the whole lives of two brothers could be considered like the paradigm of a likely, contemporary European myth;Macramé, is a tale about Carmelo Pericle and was used as the plot for an artistic workshop and sensitive pedagogic approach in the schools which involved the Sicilian children of the primary school “Monte degli Ulivi” of Riesi for an European project in collaboration with the Fitcarraldo Foundation of Turin.

A multi-screen video installation and a physical meeting point in Tirana will knot again ideas and cultures on the road to the Adriatic Sea with the participation of Lorenzo Romito (Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade), Piero Vereni (an anthropologist of the Tor Vergata University of Rome) and Petros Lekapinos (the Alberto Savinio greek translator) and in collaboration with the Independent Film Show, coordinated by the Euro Mediterranean Arts of Napoles.The activities of ilmotorediricerca are promoted and financed by Regione Puglia, Assessorato alla Trasparenza e Cittadinanza Attiva within the “Principi Attivi” project.

Workshop Series, 5-6 December 2009Balkan Cinema through Cross-Cultural PerspectivesDiaspora cinema, transnational cinema, cinema of migration, exilic cinema, world cinema, accented cinema – all are terms that have been attached to cross-cultural filmmaking. These cinemas see persons, ideas or cinematic products flow indiscriminately between different cultural contexts. Through the movement/migration of filmmakers or films, this flow entails forms of transculturalisations, or ‘translations’, which shape the viewing practices of audiences and the films’ expressions, representations and mode of address. Cross-cultural cinema is about the interactive working process of more than one cultural context. It can be a particular way of narrating a film, of influence the topic or the genre of a film, or simply by transnational audiences (such as the TIFF audience) watching films from around the World. But common for this practice is the fusion and interface of diverse cultural contexts.

In the cross-cultural perspective, the focus is on films produced within a poly-cultural context. In cinema, borrowing from multiple sources has always been the order of the day, but cross-cultural cinema (in its various forms) has never endured more attention than in the global postcommunist condition. The workshop series at TIFF seek to move forward these issues by having leading film scholars giving their views on how cinematic production from cross-cultural contexts function in the area of Balkan cinema.

Workshop 1, Saturday 5 December 2009

Dr. Marian TutuiBalkan Cinema an Early Example of Transnational Cinema Balkan cinema is already an accepted concept (after the world recognition of Kusturica`s films in the 90s) but seldom defined. It involves not only sharing a series of common cultural assets and sensibility or genres (e.g. black comedy, films on outlaws etc.), but it deals also with diaspora and transnationalism. The early case of Manakia brothers (1907- 1912) is more than eloquent for both diaspora and transnational cinema. Together with other examples of cinema pioneers in the Balkans, this talk will prove that from its beginnings – and especially with mute films, cinema has always been a transnational phenomenon. Despite tense political relations, the Turkish- Greek co-production, The Wrong Road/Kakos dromos/Fena yol (1933), solved the problem of making the first Greek film with sound, and recent co-productions of a certain genre ("foustanella") have proved popular in both Greece and Turkey. These films deal with a broader "Balkan reality" and are thus distributed widely throughout the region. The markets and consumers of these films are not exclusively on the national domestic market of the filmmakers.

Prof. Bruce WilliamsThe Eagle Spreads Its Wings: International Reception of the New Albanian Cinema In the wake of the demise of Kinostudio, Albanian cinema of the post-Communist/post-pyramid era has been forced to seek out new avenues of creation and divulgation through international co-production. Such a direction has transformed what used to be one of the world’s most isolated cinema traditions into a new opened-ended and often poetic discourse. It has also altered radically the trans-cultural reception of Albanian film. The paper examines how Albanian cinema of the 1990s and 2000s has been received internationally and how the socio-political realities of today’s Albania have been understood abroad through the mediation of this cinema. It focuses on the work of Kujtim Çhashku, Mevlan Shanaj, Vladimir Prifi, Fatmir Koçi, etc.

Panel Discussion: Cross-Culturalism in Future Constellations. This panel discussion will sum up the workshop series by aiming at the future. What is installed for filmmaking when money and filmmakers flow more easily over cultural borders? Are there lessons to be learnt from past flows, be it monetary, human or cinematic products? And where is film studies heading in all this? These questions can hardly be resolved at one session at the festival, but the discussion can be opened. The session will also provide the festival audience with the chance to participate more actively in formation and articulation of cross-cultural cinema. The panel will be moderated by Lars Kristensen.